Smith, a racial justice community engagement manager for the YWCA of Southeast Wisconsin, believes in teaching the root causes of racism. He helps facilitate “Unlearning Racism,” a program offered by the Y.

The core idea behind their work: What was learned can be unlearned.

But these discussions don't happen often enough, Smith said.

"Racism is something (African-Americans) talk about all the time because we are the targets of it," Smith said. "Racism is a part of our regular day. White people don't have to be concerned about racism because they are coming at it from a position of power."

'I never knew'

The Y program features four-hour workshops held several times over a six-week period. Topics include the roots and impact of racism, understanding whiteness and each person's role in addressing racism.

The program is a starting point, said Brenda Skelton, chief executive officer of the Siebert Lutheran Foundation, who took the workshop in 2014.

Skelton, 63, who is white, said before she took the Y classes, she was the typical "limo liberal" who felt she was enlightened because she had friends of different races and backgrounds. But after taking a Harvard University quiz on bias during one of the workshops, Skelton realized she had work to do.

"One of the quizzes showed that I had a bias toward people with light skin, and that really hit me," she said. "I never knew."

The workshops work because they show a different side of history not taught in school, Skelton said. "We get references to Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks and that's important," she said. "But we are not taught how this country was built on slave labor at a time when we proclaimed that all people were created equal."

A painful truth that students in the program have to acknowledge: Everyone has a role in perpetuating racism, Smith said.

"After taking the workshops, you can't say you didn't know."

The workshops are not designed to blame people for being white but to understand that historically the systems that run everything from government to business to education were created with whites in mind, he said.

“We learned that people fear what they don’t understand and hate what they fear,” he said. “We try to break through all of that with education and conversation.”

While the Y has anecdotal evidence that its program works, it has not been independently evaluated. The organization wants to conduct a full evaluation of the curriculum and outcomes.

Other research shows educational programs can work when properly constructed.

Jane Elliott's 'blue eye, brown eye' study

Elliott, 85, conducted her "blue eye, brown eye" social experiment the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in 1968. She separated Iowa third-graders by eye color to show her students how it felt to face discrimination.

As a blue-eyed woman, her brown-eyed children were given preferential treatment on the first day, and they treated her badly because they had power over her, she recalled. Elliott said the responses and reactions of the students in power versus those without mirror how racism is played out in this country. The children were only able to understand how the other side felt when the roles were reversed.

"I found out how it feels to be subjected to unbelievable and unreal discrimination because of a physical characteristic to which I had no control," Elliott said during a 2017 interview. "I thought I knew about racism. I thought I knew about child psychology. I knew nothing."

The next day, she put the blue-eyed kids in charge. Same result.

Education and communication are the best ways to overcome racism, Elliott said.

For real talks about race to occur, "tolerance" isn't enough, she said. When she conducted her exercise and was on the bottom, she discovered what it was like to be "tolerated."

"I found out that tolerance means 'put up with.' ... I don't want to be tolerated. I want to be valued, recognized and appreciated."

America's lingering problem with race

Racist advertising used in the past to sell, in this case, tobacco products.(Photo: Photo courtesy of Reggie Jackson)

A 2018 NBC News poll showed that 64 percent still consider racism to be a major problem in America compared with only 1 percent who said racism has never been an issue. Thirty percent of those surveyed believe racism still exists, but it is not a major issue.

But even though many believe racism is a problem, they don't talk about it very much.

Only 51 percent talk about race with their friends and families, and 47 percent said they rarely have those discussions.

Blackface dates back to minstrel shows in which actors darkened their skin to mock stereotypical black culture. The 1915 silent film "The Birth of a Nation" used blackface to perpetuate the notion of blacks as uncouth savages unable to control their sexual urges for white women.

One egregious blackface incident: when Danson darkened his skin for a Friar’s Club roast in 1993, Jackson recalled.

Danson, who is white, roasted his then-girlfriend, Whoopi Goldberg, who is black. He dressed in blackface with big white lips painted on his face and performed a 20-minute skit. The N-word laced performance prompted an apology from the Club, but two days later, the apology was retracted.

“She defended him for this disgraceful performance,” Jackson said.

But even now, blackface isn't always seen for what it is

Why do blackface incidents still occur in 2019? A Pew Research Center poll illustrates the answer.

In February, the poll showed that 53 percent of people find it generally unacceptable for a white person to wear blackface as part of a Halloween costume. Of those polled, 37 percent say darkening one’s skin to look black is never acceptable.

But 34 percent found that it is always or sometimes acceptable to wear blackface as part of a costume.

A photocopied image of Nicolet standout Jalen Johnson that made it appear he was wearing blackface. (Photo: Photos courtesy Angela Hamilton)

“Some people have convinced themselves that blackface is not offensive," Jackson said. "It’s part of the mindset that many whites have in the country about blacks that we should mock them."

Those who put on blackface can always wash it off and go back to living their normal lives or apologize if they get caught, but the people who are victimized must live with the pain.

During a boys basketball game in Port Washington, 60 high school students from that school held up a photocopied image of Nicolet star Jalen Johnson that made it appear that he was wearing blackface. A Port Washington student had created copies of the picture and then handed them out in the student section.

When Johnson went to the free throw line, the students held up the photos, which depicted Johnson in a charcoal facial mask to care for his skin that had been taken off his Instagram page.

Johnson, who is black, received an apology from Port Washington principal Eric Burke.

But an apology is not enough, Jackson said.

“I’m sure Jalen Johnson will never forget how those students treated him and made him feel. That will last with him the rest of his life."

'Open for people who want to learn'

Benson and Jackson both use their platforms to teach African-American history.

When America's Black Holocaust Museum opens in Milwaukee in a few months, it will have discussions on issues such as blackface, and it will look to borrow artifacts from places such as the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University in Michigan. Those artifacts will help engage people in conversations and fill in gaps in their knowledge, Jackson said.

Benson offers talks, workshops and history lessons on the role of African-Americans in the city. Outside his museum, at North 26th and West Center streets, a mural on the side of the building traces the history of African-Americans from the time they arrived in America to when they made the journey to Wisconsin.

"My place is always open for people who want to learn," he said.

James E. Causey is a reporter for the Ideas Lab at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He reports on how to improve the lives of disadvantaged people in Wisconsin.(Photo: Mike De Sisti)

James E. Causey reports on how to improve the lives of disadvantaged people in Wisconsin for the Journal Sentinel's Ideas Lab. Email: james.causey@jrn.com. Twitter: @jecausey

Race in Milwaukee: Join us Thursday

What are your questions about race and racism in Milwaukee? Join James E. Causey Thursday for a Facebook Live event on race in Milwaukee. His conversation with Reggie Jackson of America's Black Holocaust Museum will begin at 1:30 p.m.

How I reported this story

After Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam was caught up in a blackface controversy, I noticed a spike in racial incidents, many of them reported on blogs and websites such as Ebony magazine, The Root, and Bossip.com. I counted at least 28 racial incidents that made the news — basically one a day during February, a month set aside to celebrate black achievement. I explored possible approaches to curb such racist incidents and found the "Unlearning Racism" workshops offered by the YWCA (which more than 1,000 people have taken). I interviewed Jamaal E. Smith, racial justice coordinator for the YWCA of Southeast Wisconsin, who helps coordinate the program and participant Brenda Skelton. I also drew on my 2017 interview with Jane Elliott, who conducted a famous experiment on race when she was a teacher in Iowa. I asked Harvard University's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy to help me find studies on anti-racist education and reviewed what they sent me. I also dug up a meta-analysis published in 2017 by South African researchers that examined programs to educate people about racial bias.

Blackface in the news

• Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s 1984 medical school yearbook page showed a person in blackface and one in Ku Klux Klan outfit. Initially, Northam took responsibility for the photo but would not say which person was him. Then at a news conference, days later he denied that he was in the photo but admitted to putting shoe polish on his face to impersonate Michael Jackson for a dance contest in 1984.

• Virginia state Sen. Tommy Norment confirmed that he was the editor of a 1968 Virginia Military Institute yearbook featuring several students in blackface. The Republican majority leader’s yearbook is loaded with derogatory language toward blacks, Asians and Jews.

• Virginia’s attorney general, Mark Herring, admitted he wore blackface to impersonate rapper Kurtis Blow for a college party in 1980. Four days before Herring’s scandal, he had said Northam should step down for his blackface debacle.

• Singer Katy Perry's shoe brand faced criticism when the style featured big eyes, nose and full red lips. The black shoe drew comparisons to blackface. The shoes were removed from online stores after complaints. Perry issued a statement saying "Our intention was never to inflict any pain."

• The Marine Corps is investigating its own after a video went viral showing two men in Marine Corps uniforms wearing black masks with holes cut out around their eyes, noses and mouths. One of the men mentions blackface. The other says "Hello, monkey."